Benoît Ulysse de Ratti-Menton

Benoît Laurent François de Paul-Ulysse Ratti-Menton (* 1799 in Puerto Rico ; † 1864 ) was a French diplomat who helped to cause the " Damascus affair ".

Life

Benoît Ulysse de Ratti-Menton entered the consular service in 1822. From 1824 he was employed at the consulate in Genoa . From 1839 he was consul in Damascus , where he became one of the actors in the Damascus affair . He supported the Christian traders and advisers in their allegations of ritual murder against the Jews . As a result, there were riots against Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. In Damascus itself, an incited crowd stormed the synagogue and burned the Torah scrolls . The British and the Austrian consul of Damascus, Merlatto , stood up for the Jews imprisoned on the charges. He made serious accusations against Ratti-Menton, which Heinrich Heine commented in his Paris column Lutezia on May 7, 1840 as follows:

“Today's Paris newspapers bring a report from the kk Austrian consul in Damascus to the kk Austrian consul general in Alexandria, regarding the Damascus Jews, whose martyrdom is reminiscent of the darkest times of the Middle Ages. [...] The French consul in Damascus, Count Ratti Menton, was guilty of things that caused a general cry of horror here. It is he who inoculated the occidental superstition in the Orient and distributed a pamphlet among the mob of Damascus in which the Jews are accused of murdering Christians. This hate-snorting script, which Count Menton received from his spiritual friends for the purpose of dissemination, was originally borrowed from the Bibliotheca prompta a Lucio Ferrario, and it is quite definitely asserted in it that the Jews needed the blood of Christians to celebrate their Passover. "

- Wilhelm Bölsche (Ed.) : Heinrich Heines all works. Vol. 5. Verlag von R. Trenkel, Berlin [no year]. P. 177 f.

The US consul in Egypt filed a formal protest on behalf of US President Martin Van Buren . European mediators have been sent to Alexandria to conduct an independent investigation into the case. After weeks of talks with the Egyptian governor, they received his promise on August 28th to unconditionally release the prisoners and to publicly acknowledge their innocence. They then traveled to Constantinople and received an official declaration from the Sultan that the charge of ritual murder was unfounded. However, four of the 13 main defendants had since died in prison. The bodies of Father Tomaso and his servant were never found.

From 1846 Ratti-Menton was consul in Calcutta . From 1853 until his transfer to the retirement in 1862 he was chargé d'affaires in Lima .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Werner Bergmann, Brigitte Mihok, Handbook of Antisemitism : Anti-Semitism in Past and Present, Volume 2, p. 672
2. ↑ Tsing-sing Louis Wei, La politique missionnaire de la France en Chin 1842-1856: l'ouverture des cinq ports chinois au commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse, p. 242

predecessor	Office	successor
	French consul in Damascus 1839 to 1846	Jean-Charles Serres
	French ambassador to India from 1846 to 1853	Jules Henri François Charles-Roux
Charles François Frédéric de Montholon-Sémonville	French Chargé d'affaires in Lima December 10, 1853 to 1862	Albert Huet